SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES

CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize Lecture
November 20, 2006 at 3: 30 p.m.

The CRM-Fields-PIMS prize is intended to be the premier mathematics
prize in Canada. The winner receive a monetary award, and
an invitation to present a lecture at each institute during
the semester when the award is announced. The prize recognizes
exceptional achievement in the mathematical sciences.

High dimensional convex bodies: phenomena, intuitions
and results.

Phenomena in large dimensions appear in a number of fields of
mathematics and related fields of science, dealing with functions
of infinitely growing number of variables and with objects that
are determined by infinitely growing number of parameters. In
this talk we trace these phenomena in linear-metric, geometric
and some combinatorial structure of high-dimensional convex
bodies. We shall concentrate this presentation on very recent
results in Asymptotic Geometric Analysis.

MONTRÉAL, December
2005. The directors of the Centre de recherches mathématiques
(CRM) of l'Université de Montréal - François
Lalonde, the Fields Institute - Barbara Keyfitz, and the Pacific
Institute for the Mathematical Sciences - Ivar Ekeland, are pleased
to announce the awarding of the CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize for 2006 to
Professor Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann of the University of Alberta
in recognition of her exceptional achievements in functional analysis
and geometric analysis.

The prize was established in 1994 as the CRM-Fields prize to
recognize exceptional research in the mathematical sciences. In
2005, PIMS became an equal partner and the name was changed to
the CRM-Fields-PIMS prize. A committee appointed by the three
institutes chooses the recipient.

Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann, this year's recipient, is one of the
world's leading mathematicians working in functional analysis.
She has made outstanding contributions to infinite dimensional
Banach space theory, asymptotic geometric analysis, and the
interaction between these two streams of modern functional
analysis. She is one of the few mathematicians who have contributed
important results to both areas. In particular, her work constitutes
an essential ingredient in a solution by the 1998 Fields Medallist
W.T. Gowers of the homogeneous space problem raised by Banach
in 1932.

Professor Tomczak-Jaegermann received her Master's (1968) and
Ph.D. (1974) degrees from Warsaw University in Poland. She
held a position at Warsaw University from 1975 to 1983 and
was visiting professor at Texas A & M University during
1981-1983. In 1983 she moved to the University of Alberta
where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Geometric Analysis.
She gave an invited lecture at the International Congress
of Mathematicians in 1998, is a Fellow of the Royal Society
of Canada, received a Killam Research Fellowship, and the
Krieger-Nelson Prize Lectureship of the Canadian Mathematical
Society. She has served the Canadian research community in
various ways including NSERC and CMS committees, the Canada
Council Killam Research Fellowship Committee, the Canada Research
Chairs College of Reviewers, as well as the Scientific Board
of BIRS. She has also served as the University of Alberta
Site Director of PIMS and as Associate Editor of the Canadian
Journal of Mathematics and the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin.

A brief article commenting further on her work was published
in the May 2006 issue of FieldsNotes. An expanded version
is available here.